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The music became secondary to being rock stars.

When rock came along the lyrics and melodies became less important and it bothered me to think that perhaps they might not regain the value they have to music - they are music.

I feel like the rap metal at the end of the 1990s destroyed rock music for everybody and suddenly everybody felt like they had to apologise for being in rock bands. People suddenly felt bad about wanting to reach massive audiences and the sense of theatre, that we have in our live show, became something to avoid.

That was a time when I did love music, I couldn't get enough of what was going on. Maybe it was Nirvana that brought me back. I guess it was a comfort because something that sounded so right - and non-commercial - had become so influential, so immediately.

Rock and roll's relatively new, in the sense of the Fifties, Sixties, right? They invented the first sort of rock stars, and they took it to excess, and then the excess became bitter, tormented. Then it became okay to succeed.

I think between The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and innumerable acts after that... rock music became a huge economic force.

I was raised to think that rock was music for ignorant people who didn't think for themselves.

Rock n' roll unchained a nation and revolutionized radio and the record industry, not to mention the motion picture business.

The trouble is now, with rock'n'roll and stuff, it gets so big that it loses what once upon a time was a magnificent thing, where it was special and quite elusive and occasionally a little sinister and it had its own world nobody could get in.

It disturbed me that the music industry had gone down the drain, even though people were listening to more music than ever and from a greater diversity of artists.